How spilled with berries were its summer hills,
And strewn with walnuts were its autumn rills—­
And chestnut burs! fruit of the spring’s long flowers,
When from their tops the trees seemed streaming showers
Of slender silver, cool, crepuscular,
And like a nebulous radiance shone afar. 
And maples! how their sappy hearts would gush
Broad troughs of syrup, when the winter bush
Steamed with the sugar-kettle, day and night,
And all the snow was streaked with firelight. 
Then it was glorious! the mill-dam’s edge,
One slant of frosty crystal, laid a ledge
Of pearl across; above which, sleeted trees
Tossed arms of ice, that, clashing in the breeze,
Tinkled the ringing creek with icicles,
Thin as the peal of Elfland’s Sabbath bells: 
A sound that in my city dreams I hear,
That brings before me, under skies that clear,
The old mill in its winter garb of snow,
Its frozen wheel, a great hoar beard below,
And its West windows, two deep eyes aglow.

Ah, ancient mill, still do I picture o’er
Thy cobwebbed stairs and loft and grain-strewn floor;
Thy door,—­like some brown, honest hand of toil,
And honorable with labor of the soil,—­
Forever open; through which, on his back
The prosperous farmer bears his bursting sack. 
And while the miller measures out his toll,
Again I hear, above the cogs’ loud roll,—­
That makes stout joist and rafter groan and sway,—­
The harmless gossip of the passing day: 
Good country talk, that tells how so-and-so
Has died or married; how curculio
And codling-moth have ruined half the fruit,
And blight plays mischief with the grapes to boot;
Or what the news from town; next county fair;
How well the crops are looking everywhere: 
Now this, now that, on which their interests fix,
Prospects for rain or frost, and politics. 
While, all around, the sweet smell of the meal
Filters, warm-pouring from the grinding wheel
Into the bin; beside which, mealy white,
The miller looms, dim in the dusty light.

Again I see the miller’s home, between
The crinkling creek and hills of beechen green: 
Again the miller greets me, gaunt and brown,
Who oft o’erawed me with his gray-browed frown
And rugged mien:  again he tries to reach
My youthful mind with fervid scriptural speech.—­
For he, of all the country-side confessed,
The most religious was and happiest;
A Methodist, and one whom faith still led,
No books except the Bible had he read—­
At least so seemed it to my younger head.—­
All things in earth and heav’n he’d prove by this,
Be it a fact or mere hypothesis;
For to his simple wisdom, reverent,
“The Bible says” was all of argument.—­
God keep his soul! his bones were long since laid
Among the sunken gravestones in the shade
Of those black-lichened rocks, that wall around
The family burying-ground with cedars crowned;
Where bristling teasel and the brier combine
With clambering wood-rose and the wild-grape vine
To hide the stone whereon his name and dates
Neglect, with mossy hand, obliterates.